James Bulger

[Monty27]

Hang your head in shame Vincent Lambre.
You low life creep.
Anyone?

Me too, a toddler's death is not entertainment for ghouls

I’ve been ruminating about this and, although it obviously doesn’t affect me directly in anyway, I’m actually enraged on behalf of the family. Imagine being a mum, whose baby has been murdered and every few months - for years and years - you turn on the radio, tv or look at the internet and there it is again. Your baby’s murder and their killers the topic of the day. There’s nothing to be gained. Everything has been said, re-hashed, and said again and again. Yet, you’re confronted with it all the time.

Imagine what courage it takes to even leave the house when you know that yet again, someone has found it oh so fascinating that they’ve made yet another film/documentary/YouTube video/article. It’s on the radio in the car, you’re sent emails/msgs from friends who’ve heard or read something, your phone pings with social media notifications. Police liaison may contact you (or not). Journalists and researchers contact you. People even try to find out where you live and turn up on your doorstep. Internet forums (like this one) run threads to garner every opinion under the sun. Newspaper and magazine headlines are visible in the supermarket, at the corner shop, at the garage. Literally everywhere you go - even many years after the worst thing that could happen, happened - you’re actively confronted it by it - and other people’s ‘views’ and ‘opinions’ on the perpetrators.

This case must be fairly unique in that the perpetrators were tried, jailed and released many years ago. There’s no doubt about what happened. No questions remain unanswered. Why then, does society think it’s their business to reopen this family’s wounds time and time again. Shouldn’t we say enough is enough? Should we not be ashamed of adding to their pain?

Again I agree.

And also - look at film-making/creative industries. There are a billion stories you can tell- billions. There are billions of real life stories that are fascinating, there are made up stories that are brilliant. You want to explore children who do terrible things? Do it- but cmon, you chose a crime not 25 yrs old, where the family are still suffering, a story that’s never been out the press? It’s a lack of imagination at best - hanging onto that cases noteriety to get viewers yourself. Lazy. Unkind. Unfair.

I do wonder about why this case attracts so much attention. Mary Bell killed twice at the age of 11, served 12 years and has lived a normal life with a new identity ever since. We never hear about her crimes and her victims' names are totally forgotten.

@potatoscone To be fair there might be people out there who did think they should be in adult prison from their conviction. I just wanted to be clear that is not what I thought.

i do wonder about why this case attracts so much attention

It’s very sad- I feel the cctv footage of them taking him away made a huge psychological difference in that we all became terrible bystanders.

I believe this case changed people forever. I think children stopped being allowed to play out because of the image of James being led away. The murderers destroyed so many childhoods.

I think it’s one of those cases that stays with you because who hasn’t been in a shop with their toddler / young child and lost sight of them for 2 seconds - literally 2 seconds- particularly before this case happened. It’s so easily done. Poor Denise was just paying for something and turned around and he was gone. I think as parents we can all relate to that, and in turn feel absolute horror at the events that followed.

I get all of that but why this one case when other children who have killed are forgotten? As are their victims, I had to google Mary Bell to remind myself of her victims' names. She killed two little boys in separate incidents.

Because of that reason I think ... other children killed in similar circumstances weren’t taken / abducted the same way, with the mum being only feet away in a busy shopping centre.

It’s very sad- I feel the cctv footage of them taking him away made a huge psychological difference in that we all became terrible bystanders.

I think you're right Helmet - the image is heartbreaking, utterly chilling, and probably everyone of a certain age & older can remember where they were when they saw that footage, and when the story unfolded. It's no less chilling all these years later.

I was in Belgium, only a teenager. I phoned my mother, and had no idea what had happened on the day it broke, and she wouldn't tell me what was wrong, but she was audibly in shock about something. Then later that day it was on the Belgian news. I just wanted to come home.

OliviaStabler no it wouldn't give your opinions more gravitas. It's just I am local to the area, and wondered if you were too. The strength of feeling towards V & T at the time, I couldn't put into words, though I'm not suggesting that those opinions were exclusive to Liverpool.

bluelady

I think comparisons of crimes such as these are odious but the Mary Bell case was 1968 and has faded from collective memory somewhat. The Bulger killing (1993) had a dimension to it which horrified the public deeply and there are several similarities between these two sets of child murderers, not least troubled backgrounds.

I would question how normal Mary Bell or her life ever was and has been since; she's had to change her identity at least once. There was no smooth rehabilitation process.

I’m not sure if anyone is interested but since we’re talking about crimes that fascinate the public and why....

Anyone familiar with the very recent Chris Watts case? He murdered his wife and two very young daughters and put their bodies in very rural oil tanks and buried his wife next to them. There is TONS of stuff about it all online, hours and hours of their Instagram stories (wife was marketing diet patches and so would regularly document their lives), there’s hours of news footage where he’s being interviewed calm as anything saying he doesn’t know where they’ve gone (an hour after hiding the bodies) and 2000 pages of court transcripts and interviews. My family is from America and people are literally obsessed with it all. More than any other recent case.

I do think- as with the James Bulger cctv image and the horror of the murderers being children themselves- that people are fascinated by cases where the “monster” doesn’t look like a monster at all.

Thing is we don't know, we never hear about her. She had to change her identity because the press exposed the one she was given when she was released.

I completely agree that comparisons between such cases is tasteless but the Bulger killers were by no means the first. All the others have just faded quietly away.

bluelady I think the public seeing the cctv footage plays a huge impact. It’s so chilling and therefore feels the most real to people. Also the time frame aswell the Mary bell stuff was in the 60 this the 90 so technology and this had changed since the Mary bell and the public were therefore closer to it. Also as pp have said the fact that his mum and other adults were so close to him made it so shocking that these 2 boys just managed to lead him away and scared the public thinking how easily it could happen.

Good point about technology, you're right, it makes it more immediate.

Mary Bell was pimped out for sexual exploitation by her mother since the age of four. Her mother had tried to murder her a number of times and she had sustained brain damage from the physical abuse she had received. There was a bit of an outcry when she cooperated with Gita Sereny on her autobiography.

The Norwegian case which is always wheeled out involved much younger children (6) and its success is debatable. One of those boys is a homeless drug addict and while the boys were accepted back into the fold the victims family had to move away to another suburb. But they do to this day have painful encounters with the killers in the city.

Venables and Thompson were different because it was premeditated and they knew exactly what they wanted to do. They had been killing animals and James was the third child they tried to abduct.

There’s also the BIG matter that Venables appears to have manipulated the justice system from day 1. Thompson came from a very abusive background and Venables didn’t. Venables was the more articulate of the two and from the more stable family. As a consequence the authorities accepted that Venables had been led astray by the tough boy whose life was steeped in violence. They didn’t even pursue the sexual aspect of the crime because Venables became hysterical when they tried to question him on it.

When he went up on parole they released him even though they knew he had a sexual interest in children. While he was on parole he repeatedly broke the terms of his parole, took drugs, fought in the street, entered areas he was banned from. But the parole board did nothing until he was caught with images of CSE.

It’s become abundantly clear that Venables is sexually excited by children and specifically by children being hurt or harmed. It’s also very obvious now that he was the leader of the two, not Thompson, and James’s murder was a sexual crime.

He has, at every point, been able to manipulate well meaning professionals (one of the teachers at his school even had sex with him ffs) and pulled the wool over their eyes and got what he wants out of them.

It still gets talked about because it is an issue. He’s in jail now, but for how much longer? His rehabilitation hasn’t worked any of the other times. He’s in prison now, but if he hoodwinks the parole board again? How many more times is he going to be given the benefit of the doubt?

How do you know all this Augusta?

This information is all in the public domain I’ve read it before

It’s also very obvious now that he was the leader of the two, not Thompson, and James’s murder was a sexual crime.

No it isn't.

Augusta. That's an awful lot of claims you have made which go against what most people have read.

Do you have any links to back any of it up?

one of the teachers at his school even had sex with him ffs

So he was sexually abused.

No it isn't.

Oh, so you think it’s completely coincidental that a man who murdered and sexually assaulted a child has turned out as an adult as somebody who gets his jollies looking at hundreds of pictures of children being abused, hurt and degraded. Yeah course it is. Rightio.

So he was sexually abused.

No he wasn’t. He was over the age of consent and it was consensual. No crime was committed. It broke the rules of her employment but nothing else.

It is quite something to watch liberals try and go through all sorts of contortions to make these two into the victims.

It’s not obvious that he was the leader of the two and it’s not obvious that his interest in CSA is the cause and not at least partially the effect of the murder.